Lutfey.com

  • President Obama has chosen a former Microsoft executive, Kurt DelBene, to replace Jeffrey D. Zients as head of the effort to finish repairs on the government’s health insurance website, administration officials said on Tuesday. “I’m bringing in years of experience to turn this project around,” commented DelBene. “We want to create a website that is functional and easy for the American public to understand. For example, once an individual has reached their lifetime payout limit the website will simply display the ‘blue screen of death’.”

  • Snapchat, the high-tech start up that lets users transmit text messages and images that disappear a few seconds after being sent, has recently turned down a $3 billion dollar offer from Facebook. When asked for a comment on the situation a high ranking yet unnamed official at the company replied, “We believe that there is a lot more money to be made by taking all this stuff everyone thinks is getting erased and selling it to the Russian Mob.”

  • In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. –Benjamin Franklin

    Not so fast there Ben. –Google

    Google’s New Company Calico To Try to Cheat Death
    www.technologyreview.com/view/…/google-to-try-to-solve-death-lol/
    Sep 17, 2013 – A new company launched by Google will seek to extend human life spans.

    Google dodges billions in taxes with Bermuda tax haven
    The Global Dispatch ‎- 1 day ago
    The UK tax authority has indicated it is investigating Google.

  • I was talking with my chiropractor the other day about “horse punching” in movies. He said they use trip wires to knock the horse over which seems pretty cruel to the animal.  While he was twisting my neck back and forth I made the reassuring observation that “at least with today’s computer animation technology any future horse punching scenes can be rendered digitally.”

  • So I’m watching Wall-e (again) and now I’m trying to figure out how exactly he hooked up a 1980’s VCR to a first generation iPod to watch “Hello Dolly.” I think it is safe to say that I’ve watched this movie about 100 times beyond the recommended lifetime allowance for any adult male human.

  • For the first time in several years I had the entire house to myself for the entire week. My wife, children and in-laws all skipped town to go see my brother-in-law get married. I would have gone too, but I wasn’t able to get the week off of work to make the trip up to Michigan. I stayed home, worked Monday through Friday, and kept an eye or two on the dogs to make sure they stayed out of trouble.

    On the week nights I didn’t do too much out of the ordinary. For the most part I would come home, clean up, feed the dogs, and, if I could stay awake long enough, watch a movie on Netflix from the category “Stuff you aren’t allowed to watch with the kids in the house.” The list includes Battlestar Gallactica, Caprica, Rush Hour, and Highlander. My wife doesn’t seem to want to watch Highlander with me much anymore. Well, that isn’t exactly true– she really never wanted to see it from, I suspect, the moment of her birth. Especially impressive since Highlander wasn’t released until several years after her original birthday. I’m not sure what her exact stance is on the four sequels and the cable television series, but I suspect it lands somewhere in the– and I’m being generous here– “unfavorable” to “throw the lamp into the television to make it stop” range.

    So what about the weekend? On Saturday night I went out with a friend from work to play laser tag. I used to play a lot in high school, but I think it has been at least 15 years since I last strapped on a laser tag vest. While there have been some minor technological improvements, the game is pretty much the same as I remembered. Right before leaving the house I started a load of laundry. This explained why, when we entered the black-light lit staging area, my hands were glowing bright white. Maybe I’ve watched a few too many episodes of CSI, but I kept thinking that everyone else was thinking that my hands were recently covered in blood or other bodily fluids. I would have gotten away with killing that hobo if I hadn’t gone to play laser tag after having disposed of the body in a wood chipper. I’ll remember that for next time.

    That about wraps up the notable activities for the week. Everyone is coming back tomorrow evening, so things will be back to normal when I come home from work tomorrow night. Hmm… maybe I have enough time to watch Terminator 2 before I go to sleep tonight.

  • I’ve peered into my 17-months-into-the-future crystal ball, and a disturbing development has come to light. An unnamed evil marketing company has developed a new interactive robo-calling computer with the objective of selling a specific product or service.  This practice, known as “Siri Snooping,” can simultaneously interact with tens of thousands of humans using countless different voice patterns and vocabulary sets based on individual personal data. Authorities are trying to track down the physical location of this rogue computer system with their primary suspect being, of course, “Watson! The Jeopardy Winning Computer.”

  • I’ve peered into my 17-months-into-the-future crystal ball, and a disturbing development has come to light. An unnamed evil marketing company has developed a new interactive robo-calling computer with the objective of selling a specific product or service.  This practice, known as “Siri Snooping,” can simultaneously interact with tens of thousands of humans using countless different voice patterns and vocabulary sets based on individual personal data. Authorities are trying to track down the physical location of this rogue computer system with their primary suspect being, of course, “Watson! The Jeopardy Winning Computer.”

  • I hurt my back last week opening the rear door of my UPS truck.  The chiropractor took x-rays of my spine and explained how a healthy back should curve like the letter “S”.  My back looked more like a combination of a treble clef and the unpronounceable symbol used by the artist formerly known as Prince.

  • Welcome to part seven of my randomly ordered, finite but arbitrary large set of financial tips:

    Hoard food coupons that do not contain expiration dates. If started early and executed properly, this method will provide free food between the years of 65 and 103.

  • Notice to all Hertz rental offices in Northern California:

    After a complete analysis of our operation over the past decade, we have found a disturbing trend that has accounted for a disproportionate amount of revenue loss in the Northern California division. It appears that one organization has been responsible for a vast majority of our damage claims. They have rented cars from our locations and then have returned them in various states of disrepair. Some vehicles appear to have been repeatedly parallel parked in a tight spot. Others have been returned with after-market equipment which allows the vehicle to be operated via remote control. One appears to have been retrofitted with rockets in the trunk.

    Our report has found that this group accounts for 73% of all damage claims in the district and has reduced profits by a staggering 54%.  For these reasons, we are directing all employees to categorically refuse renting any vehicles to the following loosely organized group of people who often times refer to themselves as the “Mythbusters.”

  • Just a quick post for some predictions on where things are headed with this whole “technology” thing.

    We are going to see some new applications with noise canceling technology. Most commonly used in headphones to quiet unwanted sounds such as annoying coworkers, jet engines, and your daughter’s pet gerbil that sits in his cage as he chews up an entire empty paper towel roll one square millimeter at a time with his black beady eyes staring at me thinking “one day I’ll get out of here and the tables will be turned. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but somewhere down the road I’ll escape from this metal cage and all bets are off.” But I digress.

    So now car companies are getting on the action by using noise canceling technology to create cars that are quieter inside by blocking out engine noise. When I get a free day to myself (projected date: 9/21/2019), I’m going to install a noise canceling device in my forced air heating and cooling system. I don’t think I need to hear the big fan in the basement from every possible location inside my home.

    The military could use this technology to help airplanes avoid radar. Currently they spend all kinds of money on planes that have unusual angular designs and special coatings to absorb radar waves. All they need to do is have a computer that listens for radar waves and then send back a wave that is exactly inverse to what the airplane is reflecting back to the radar station. Granted that these waves are moving at pretty much the speed of light, but with some clever computer programming it just might work. And it could save the Department of Defense a few dollars here and there.

    New topic– cell phone technology. While everyone and their dog knows that computer processors are getting faster all the time (roughly doubling in speed every 18 months) a somewhat less exciting benefit is that processors are using less energy per operation. While cell phones are being developed that let people talk on the phone, watch Youtube videos, and create highly accurate models of nuclear reactions all at the same time, cell phone companies could find a new market niche for phones that use so little energy to run that the device could be powered by the movement of your body in the form of a Star Trek communicator (or maybe a wrist watch for the nerd impaired). Warning: this device should not be used for anyone who is extremely lethargic.

    So that wraps things up around here. Check back in a few years to see if any of these predictions came true.